How Is The Private Memoirs And Confessions Of A Justified Sinner

In the early 1800’s it was customary for authors to publish their stories in magazines or articles as separate editions by the volume. Many authors published three volumes, but one particular author, James Hogg, published one volume entitled, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. While Hogg’s book may only have one volume, there is a more currently added editors narrative that begins the book. The editor’s narrative contains an outsider perspective, while the second part is written from the first person point of view. The book divulges the dark inner thoughts of Robert Colwan, the unacknowledged son of George Colwan, Laird of Dalcastle and his wife Rabina Colwan, Lady of Dalcastle. In texts such as this one during this …show more content…
However, when reading “The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner”, it is easy to question or doubt the sufficiency of using either label, not only because the definitions are so weak, but because initially the text contains elements of both categories. The story starts off by detailing the relationship between George and Rabina Colwan. They get married and things seem pretty ordinary. Very quickly things do take a turn, however, when the Laird tries to take his new wife to bed and she is violently resistant, due to her heavy religious background. This creates strain in their marriage and eventually leads to Rabina trying to convert George, at which she fails. Rabina’s intense religious views drove George to seek a mistress and that is where Miss Arabella Logan is introduced. Rabina, upset, looks for comfort in her Reverend, the suspected biological father of Robert, which is why George does not acknowledge him as a son. All of this seems very telling of a novel, but it is still very early on in the story. Walter Scott noted that the novel usually told a tale of love and this introductory material for the lives of Robert and George Colwan is very much a tale of love and complex …show more content…
Monica Germanà in her article, “The Sick Body and the Fractured Self: (Contemporary) Scottish Gothic” discusses the possibility of Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner being more of a work of the gothic nature. Germanà states that Scottish fiction’s “inherent (super- natural) darkness runs through the canon of [Hogg’s work]” (1). The story of Robert Colwan relies on the supernatural abilities of Gil Martin as the main dark theme throughout the novel. Logically, while reading this text, it is easy to see the comparisons with Gil Martin and Satan. Gil is constantly filling Robert’s head with terrible ideas and deadly thoughts. Robert states multiple times that Gil makes him uneasy and he starts to dread his “friend’s” visits towards the end of the book, especially once Robert is being hunted down for murder. Germanà asserts that “Scottish fantastic narratives – including those of the Gothic kind – are most typically characterized by a certain downward force” (2) which is inevitably Gil Martin in the case of Hogg’s